ot Jacob Tripple! No, no, not good Jake Tripple?" said David,
reprovingly.

"I didn't say that, father!" she exclaimed. "He's your good old friend,
and how could I hate him? He came in just before leaving for the day,
and asked for you--what, made him think you were home I can't tell, for
it was long before your time--and asked for you, and left the wreath
for--for--me."

The hem of her long checkered apron then needed close scrutiny and
folding for some unknown purpose, and this duty diverted her thoughts
from the subject, but she turned to Dolly, who enjoyed this banter in
her own quiet little way, which seldom rippled into a loud laugh, for
her own quiet little face was too pale and too pinched to invite such
freebooters. "Come, come, Little Scout," she said. "Is she warm now, and
were the rations good, and did she meet Kriss Kingle on his cold journey
(with a caress of her pale little cheeks) with heaps of warm dresses,
and heaps of pretty dolls, and heaps of sweetmeats too big to carry
himself, so he asked her to carry some home to help him! Did she? (with
another caress.) And would our Little Scout be sorry if he didn't come
himself to look after them and----"

"Ah, that reminds me!" said David, quite audibly for him, and rising
from the table with knife and fork still in hand.

"What reminds you, father?" asked the twins, in chorus.

"Why, coming home!" said David, not very intelligibly.

"What coming home?" again from the chorus, in expectant attitude.

"Why, Tom, I told you!" which he hadn't done at all, but as by this time
he was deep in the cupboard, where his overcoat hung, and as his voice
was a little more muffled than usual, it was useless to argue the point,
so the chorus loudly exclaimed,--

"Tom?"

"Yes, yes, yes!" from David, faintly and rather testily, as he had
groped through his old coat, and had successively dropped the knife and
fork, reeking with gravy, into the inside and outside pockets.

"To be sure! Tom coming home and I clean forgot it, what with the cold
and the surprises," he said again, emerging with the knife and fork in
one hand and a letter in the other. "Here it is. He'll be home
to-morrow, he says, God willin', and eat our turkey with us. Poor Tom,
poor boy! He's been away so long he's forgot Griffin and hard times, or
he wouldn't say that!"

"Tom! Be home! and to-morrow?"--interruption of chorus as it reaches for
the letter, opens and reads it aloud--Dolly being lifted